1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to inventory management systems, and more specifically relates to a method and apparatus for a pull back optimizer in an inventory management system for efficient retrieval of return assemblies for optimized parts fulfillment.
2. Background Art
Modern manufacturing often relies on just-in-time (JIT) inventory techniques to reduce the size of parts inventories. Reducing inventories reduces manufacturing costs. While smaller inventories reduce costs, there are times when key parts are needed but unavailable. Routinely there are unexpected delays in parts or new orders exceed expected demand. This may result in orders lacking a few parts before shipment is possible. Further, to make quarterly revenue goals, manufacturing may need to immediately ship some of these orders. Thus, only a few specific parts may be lacking to be able to ship and bill key customer orders.
In some manufacturing environments, there are parts available to manufacturing in return assemblies. These return assemblies may be in the form of loaner assemblies or systems that are built up of new parts and are used internally by the company for a short period of time. These return or loaner assemblies are often used for testing of the product or for product development. These systems are scheduled to come back to manufacturing for disassembly so the parts can be reused. These return assemblies can be called back to fulfill parts requirements described above. However, it is disruptive to the testing and product development teams to have these systems returned early. Other return assemblies may be in the form of completed assemblies that do not need to ship until a future date or assemblies that have been shipped to a customer but are being returned unsold.
In the prior art it was common procedure to manually determine which return assemblies should be returned to production to provide the needed parts. Manual determination of assemblies to pull back to production does not insure an optimal solution that prioritizes the return assemblies based on the quantity and mix of parts to supply the needed parts with the fewest number of return assemblies and the lowest impact on those using the return assemblies. Without a way to more effectively manage pull back of return assemblies, the manufacturing industry will continue to suffer from less efficient ways of handling parts fulfillment for priority orders and to meet end of quarter shipping goals.